This invention belongs to the realm of cytology or the study of cells and relates more specifically to an apparatus for the fully automatic and streamlined treatment of cells preparatory to their flow cytometric or like cytological studies. Among such studies are the measurements of individual cell sizes and relative intracellular amounts of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
Flow cytometry represents one of the essential tools employed in such fields as cytologic biology, cellular immunochemistry, and cytodiagnosis for cancer detection. Essentially, it aims at the classification of cells according to their sizes, types, contents of intracellular components, and like characteristics. Flow cytometry involves the pigmentation of cells with fluorescent dyes. The pigmented cells are caused to individually fluorescence under laser beam irradiation while flowing through slender tubing. The intensities of fluorescence of the individual cells are measured for the determination of their sizes, relative amounts of DNA, etc.
One of the problems left unsolved in the art of flow cytometry is how to expedite the complete process of pretreating cells to be studied. Such pretreatment consists of many steps to be followed strictly in a prescribed order. Among the steps are the introduction of reagents into cell samples within sample tubes, the centrifugal treatment of the sample-reagent mixtures, the removal of the unnecessary liquid tops from the sample tubes, the staining of the cells with a fluorescent dye, and the filtration of the samples. The actual process is much more complex.
Conventionally, as far as we are aware, such cell pretreatment has been mostly performed manually at the cost of much time and labor. Manual pretreatment is also undesirable by reasons of unavoidable human errors and the nonuniformity of operations from one individual operator to another. The advent of an apparatus capable of full automation of cell pretreatment has thus been long awaited by the cytologists for the elimination of human toil and for gaining stability and constancy in the operations involved No such apparatus is known to us, however, because of the complexities of the processes of cell pretreatment.